Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Chapter 18
Valtu
This is where writing in my journal gets harder. Throughout my years, I’ve learned more about the human mind than most, and a curious thing I learned was selective memory bias. This is where the human mind (and for all intents and purposes, the vampiric mind) has a tendency to not remember things as they are but how they want to remember them. It’s why people may look back at an awful period of their life and only remember the good times peppered through, such as when looking back at a relationship and thinking it was better than it actually was.
Being aware of this doesn’t change my feelings about this part of my life. There is nothing happy about this part. Yes there was joy and love, but my mind won’t rewrite the truth, it won’t hide the sorrow, and so it’s easiest just not to think of this at all. But by writing down the pain I am forced to remember what really happened.
The memories flood my brain and leave as tears.
* * *
THE VICTORIAN AGE
London – 1890
“How is she?” I asked Doctor Van Helsing for the umpteenth time that day, my cyclical pacing in the sitting room coming to a stop.
He gave me a faint smile as he came into the room and took off his glasses, rubbing them along his handkerchief. With perfect vampiric eyesight, he never needed glasses, the lenses were clear and he wore them because “It makes me look smarter.” But he never needed any help in that department either.
He didn’t have to say much. I could feel it off him, the dread of having to tell the truth. I braced my heart, my hand pressed against it as if to keep it in place, but I already knew.
“It doesn’t look good, Val,” he said to me with a shake of his head.
“Is the baby…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.
He swallowed thickly, taking a measured pause. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”
I closed my eyes and sat down on the couch, like the weight was too heavy for my chest. “I don’t understand. The baby would be a vampire.” My eyes darted to the ceiling, to the bedroom above where Lucy was with the midwife and the nurse but they couldn’t hear me from down below. “Vampires can’t just die.”
“You’re only a vampire when you turn thirty-five,” he pointed out. “Until then, yes we can and do die. In this case, I’m sorry Val but the baby didn’t make it. There is no heartbeat from it. It died in the womb. Stillbirth. And…”
“And?” There’s more? How can there be more? What can be worse than losing my child before it’s even born?
“We’re going to need to do an operation if she doesn’t go into labor. She should have at least had the signs already. We will try to induce but…”
“But?”
“If we can’t, we will have to take it out via caesarean.”
I nodded, biting my lip. “Okay…”
He gave me a grave look. “Lucy is weak, Valtu. She was never in great health to begin with. There is a chance she might not survive the operation, and if she does, she may succumb to puerperal fever.”
I stared at him. Just stared. I couldn’t come to terms with it. I couldn’t go from losing the baby to losing her. Not when I felt our lives were just getting started, not when I just got her fucking back.
“She will survive,” I growled at him. “You will do all in your power to make sure she does.”
He promised he would try.
After that, I went up to the room to be alone with my wife. I told the nurse and midwife to leave. I had some things I had been dying to say and I needed to say them before it was too late.
Lucy lay on top of the bed, a thin sheet covering her large belly. The sight of her, knowing that our child inside was dead, nearly brought me to my knees right there and then but I managed to keep going, to hold it together for the sake of her.
I walked to her side of the bed and sat on the chair across from her. Lucy’s head was to the side, her hair a wild storm of red. She opened her eyes and looked at me, tears dried on her pale cheeks. “Val?” she whispered.
“I’m here, my dove,” I told her, taking her hand in mine and kissing it. Her hand was so small, so frail and cold. She was almost a vampire herself.
“The doctor told me the news,” she managed to say weakly.
“I know,” I said to her, trying to sound brave. “He told me the same.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, closing her eyes. “I know how badly you wanted a child.”
It’s true that I did. We had been married for two beautiful years. Two years of having my Mina back, though now she was Lucy with her own interests and personality. The same, but different. I had been meaning to tell her who she was in her past life but I was waiting for the right time. I had also been wanting to tell her that I was a vampire. It had been a real pain in the ass to keep hiding my feeding sessions.